Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee, 23 Jun 2009

Meeting date: Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Official Report 253KB pdf

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Forth Replacement Crossing

Agenda item 3 is an evidence session on the Forth replacement crossing, which I still like to call the additional Forth road bridge. I welcome the panel of witnesses: John Howison, project director; Frazer Henderson, bill manager; and Mike Glover, commission project director—all from Transport Scotland—and Kathryn McKee, account director with the BIG Partnership. I also welcome Margaret Smith, who is attending for this agenda item.

I begin with a question about how the consultation process was developed; whether different approaches were considered; and which factors were used to determine decisions about consulting the public—using public exhibitions, for example—on a major project such as this.

To answer that, I will need to say something about the general process with regard to how the project has been advanced. It is very much an iterative process: we do a certain amount of engineering work; come forward with proposals; consult on the proposals; review the consultation; revise the proposals; and examine the environmental consequences. The process began in 2007—leading up to the announcement in December—during which we examined various routes and types of crossing. During 2008, we considered the outcome—the plan for a cable-stayed bridge in South Queensferry—and undertook development work on it.

The consultation really began in 2007, with exhibitions that were visited by more than 4,000 people. We ran through 2008: refining our proposals, taking account of what was happening in the analysis of the Forth road bridge and undertaking some analysis with the Forth Estuary Transport Authority.

The proposals were announced in December 2008, and very soon after that, in January, the briefings were given. Public exhibitions were held, from which we got feedback. We have been undertaking various pieces of work, and we have come up with revisions to the proposals. We are now working out the environmental consequences of some of those revisions for incorporation in the environmental statement.

Throughout that process, community engagement took place through meetings with residents and community councils, the publication of newsletters and e-zines, and the maintenance of a website. There is a fairly complex process of public engagement throughout, which is structured to fit in with the engineering and the environmental work.

Were alternative or additional approaches considered or used, such as telephone surveys, face-to-face interviews or targeted mailshots in the areas that are likely to be affected?

We need to recognise that we are talking about an engineered product, which needs to be developed in an engineering sense according to what is possible. I am not sure how feedback from focus groups would help in that respect. We have tried to present the engineering work to as wide an audience as possible, get feedback from those people and then consider what they have said in developing the project.

The point that I am driving at, I suppose, is how wide an audience can be reached and whether some of those alternative methods might have reached a wider audience.

Before I ask Kathryn McKee, who is an expert in this field, to say something, I should point out that the original consultation reached 4,500 people. More recently, the public information exhibition that we held in 12 locations over 12 days was visited by 2,200 people.

Perhaps I should give an overview of the ethos behind the consultation, which takes place on various levels. In engaging with the general public, we are, as John Howison explained, trying to reach as big an audience as is relevant for the project. In August 2007, for example, the exhibitions were very widespread and attracted 4,000 visitors from quite a wide area. However, as the project has developed, certain issues have taken on a more local significance, and we are adapting our techniques to ensure that, on the one hand, we get information to as many people as possible and that, on the other, we focus the consultation on the communities that might feel the impact of the project.

At the same time, other parallel strands of consultation are continuing to feed into the project's development. For example, we have a landowner liaison team, which is conducting one-to-one liaison with directly affected landowners; a very structured programme of environmental impact assessment consultation, which obviously requires a specific set of consultation techniques relating to environmental impacts; and a final strand that is very much focused on statutory consultees and bodies.

One thing that impacts on all consultations across Government is the fact that, because of social exclusion, time pressures, family and work commitments, disabilities and a host of other issues, some people are harder to reach than others. What have you done to get over those barriers and reach harder-to-reach groups?

We are very aware that people consume information in many different ways and have different access to different channels, so we have been careful not to conduct our consultation or disseminate information through a single means. For example, we use national and local mass media broadcasts for general announcements and with digital media such as websites and electronic newsletters, we reach a database of 3,000 people who have signed up at our events and briefings. We also have a mechanism for people who wish to write to us, a telephone inquiry line and so on.

Where we feel that we are not reaching a particular residents group or community—perhaps because they are not alert to the issues—we have conducted mail drops to provide those people with information and encourage them to engage with the process.

Our information suggests that fewer than 10 per cent of the people who attended the exhibitions made any comment. Are you concerned about that level of engagement or response? Are you satisfied that it was clear to everyone that they could comment? Will you do anything to address that shortfall?

The consultation on the exhibitions that took place in 2007 was a far wider exercise that, in its focus on corridor selection, choice of crossing and so on, had a broader scope and was of interest to a wider range of people.

Naturally, as the programme developed and the proposals became more defined, we expected that the second round of consultation would attract interest from a more local community, so I was not necessarily surprised by the level of turnout for the exhibitions. The advertising and awareness-raising communications gave the same prominence to the opportunity to attend the exhibitions as was given previously.

The mechanisms for providing feedback were not restrictive in any way and allowed people to use plenty of different channels. The issues that were raised were perhaps of a more local nature and more concerned with direct local impacts. That might explain why we received a smaller number of physical responses to the consultation. It is important to remember that the exhibitions attracted 2,000 people. The team who staffed the exhibitions also listened to all the comments, so we still got a feeling of what the feedback was regardless of whether a feedback form was submitted to articulate specific issues. We were able to consider all that feedback in the development of the project.

At the exhibition, we ensured that everyone was given a handout that included a leaflet about the scheme and a feedback form. Therefore, no one who attended the exhibition would have thought, "How do I provide feedback?"

In practice, a response rate of around 10 per cent is very good for a transport project consultation of this type. I can think of many consultations in which the response rate has been much lower. My presumption is that those people who did not reply were generally satisfied with what they picked up at the exhibition and those who sent feedback forms wished either to reinforce that point or to raise an issue that they were not happy about.

I am just a little concerned about language that suggests that the response rate is relatively good compared with that of other projects. Politicians, too, get a pretty poor response rate when the general public are asked to cast views on their performance, but none of us justifies the election turnout by saying that it is good compared with other elections. The consultation response rate is low: only one in 10 of the people who attended the exhibitions made a comment. You said that people made informal verbal comments, but we have no way of measuring those or of getting objective data on them. Is it not fair to say that?

In structuring the exhibitions, we were absolutely scrupulous about which staff would attend them to ensure that the project representatives covered the whole range of the project. There was no question of individuals receiving comments that they could not deal with. We were careful to ensure that the representatives included an environmentalist, someone who deals with the main crossing and someone dealing with the connecting roads. That allowed for a dialogue with the public. By and large, people who came to the exhibition with a question went away understanding the answer to their question. That is one reason why the response rate, in your eyes, was perhaps lower. We had some active discussions at those meetings because of the level of attendance that we put into them.

It is also important to bear in mind that the exhibitions were not the only route or channel for receiving feedback on the scheme. Since August 2007, we have had lots of other lower-level community events such as briefings and meetings with community councils. Although the exhibitions were obviously a large feature of the consultation programme, they were by no means the only way for people to provide us with feedback.

A couple of other members want to ask about the same issue.

As a preamble to my question, let me make the slight observation that what I have just heard does not square with what I hear on the doorsteps in my constituency from people who are directly affected by the project. You have explained the consultation process. It is fine to tick boxes in that way, but I would be happy to show the convener and committee members some of the many e-mails that I have received from my constituents about how the consultation was undertaken, with their feedback about the exhibitions, the public meetings and how letter drops were done or not done. I will not go into this in detail, but a briefing was held for elected representatives only weeks ago and some of us did not find out about it until after it had taken place—some MPs and MSPs were not even invited to it in the first place.

You can tick a box to say that that meeting happened, but the fact that no elected representatives from south of the river were there shows that another story is going on underneath. Many of my constituents tell me that they ask questions but do not get answers. They feel that Transport Scotland just gives them information at briefings or meetings, which does not feel like being part of a genuine consultation. How can you assure Parliament that your consultations are genuine, particularly when the vast majority of people in South Queensferry feel fatalistic about the situation now, because they were not listened to on the tunnel proposal or on many other matters? They do not feel that the consultation is genuine.

I will explain the changes that we made because of the consultation, particularly with reference to South Queensferry. The easiest way to do that is to consider the information that we gave at the time of the exhibition and in the updating newsletter of April 2009. A number of factors came through from the exhibition. Much concern was expressed about the design of the road to the south of South Queensferry, and a number of points were made: the bus provisions were not good enough, the embankment to the south of South Queensferry was too high and the access to the new road was unsatisfactory.

It can be seen in the publications that we circulated that the project's layout has subsequently changed dramatically. We have introduced new, direct bus links from the A90 as it approaches Edinburgh so that eastbound services tie directly into the City of Edinburgh Council's bus priority measures. Westbound, a new link will join the A8000, with a bus priority junction going into the Echline roundabout. That was key to unlocking the position of the junction, which we have moved further round so that it is more or less at the point where the new road will cross under the A904. In turn, that allowed us to reduce the amount of traffic on Builyeon Road, which was one of the areas of concern, and to lower the very high embankment that was to be north of Dundas home farm.

We therefore considered a number of, shall we say, apparently independent issues and the engineering behind them, and re-engineered the whole area to resolve those issues. The consultation was therefore real, because we listened carefully to people and made significant changes, which are evident in the information that we provided at the time of the exhibition and in that which we currently provide.

You referred to traffic reduction on Builyeon Road. I want to use that to illustrate something that often happens, which is that Transport Scotland makes an assertion, but local residents who ask for the evidence behind it and for up-to-date traffic figures—I have asked for them but have not received them yet—do not feel that there is hard evidence for what is proposed. They feel that information, but no hard evidence, is simply given out to people at local meetings and that there is no genuine dialogue. I can only represent what people say on the basis of having attended your consultation meetings. I acknowledge that many of the changes, some of which John Howison mentioned, are welcome—for example, the issues around the embankments and so on.

However, I think that we are about to be given an embargoed copy of a report that feeds back the results of the consultation and exhibitions that took place in January. Some changes to the roads proposals that were made and put on the website in April are the result of feedback from those exhibitions, but the report that led to those changes being made is not yet in the public domain, although it is nearly July. Many people have told me that they have had no feedback about their input into the process in January. Their input might have led to change—that is a generous interpretation of what you said—but they remain unaware of that.

We need to consider the process: consultation; engineering; reconsultation; and then exposure to the public. Between January and April there was a period when we bunkered down to do the engineering work, to ascertain what could be done to manage the issues. We published a newsletter in April that gave an update.

Before we could get to that stage, we had engaged in further consultation with community councils and local authorities, to ensure that what we were doing met their requirements. We must remember that we were considering not only trunk roads, which are Transport Scotland's responsibility, but local roads, which are the responsibility of the City of Edinburgh Council and West Lothian Council, so the councils' buy-in was necessary.

We are talking about a fairly long process, during which it is a matter of evidence that there will be a time when there is no flow of information out to people who put proposals to us. I can only say that we have tried to bring the information forward as quickly as possible. Certain consultations must go on before others do, in particular consultation with community councils and local authorities. We must square things off long before we can talk to individual residents about matters.

You described the process as "consultation; engineering; reconsultation". I presume that the work of recent weeks has been to do with reconsultation on the changes that were made as a result of the consultation in January. People say that they are being told in meetings that the time for consultation on substantive matters such as roads has passed and that only matters such as mitigation and landscaping are open for consultation and change. I want to nail that down. Are you talking about genuine reconsultation, in which your minds are still open to the different approaches that I understand have been suggested, or are the road changes—pardon this pun—set in concrete?

I should clarify what I meant. The process is as follows: consultation with the public at the exhibition; the engineering work; reconsultation with community councils and local authorities; publication of the results; putting out the information. As we go through each stage of the process, certain things become firmer.

For example, in December 2007 the decision was made that there would be a bridge at South Queensferry. In December 2008 the decision was as follows: there would be a bridge; it would be accompanied by certain roads; the scheme would be supported by intelligent transport system technology; the existing bridge would be used as a public transport corridor; and the new road would not provide a step change in capacity, although it should be slightly more efficient, so in future travel growth would have to come from public transport. Those things were set in stone in December.

We have looked at the junctions in very great detail and we have reconsulted with community councils, so those things are fairly set in stone and we are moving to a situation in which what we bring to the public will be issues such as landscaping. There has to be a process in which options are narrowed down to a final product.

I want to support Margaret Smith on a number of points. In the past, there has been understandable confusion among elected members and people who live in the area about what decisions have and have not been made. When we express concerns about the matter, it seems to come down to terminology, language and misinterpretation. I suggest that that is not the fault of the elected members or the people who live in the area. Again, you are talking like engineers about an engineering project, but people and their daily lives are gravely affected. Can we learn for the future how to talk in an open and more understandable way, so that we can learn what is still open for debate and discussion and people can have a clear understanding of what decisions have been made?

I ask Frazer Henderson to comment on the statutory processes that will follow, to place the discussion in the context of what will happen in the future. We have gone through various processes. You said that we have treated the project as an engineering exercise. There are engineering parameters that will define what is done at the end of the day, but we are mindful of the fact that the Forth replacement crossing, like all transport infrastructure, will impact on the people who use it and who live in its vicinity.

Shirley-Anne Somerville asked what lessons have been learned. Lessons are learned from every activity that we take forward—that is a given. At the end of the process, we will learn lessons for the future from today's inquiry and from the feedback that is provided.

As members are aware, we intend to introduce a bill in November this year. Residents will have an opportunity to raise any objections or concerns that they have. A bill is a dry document, although it will be supported by other materials that, hopefully, will explain its provisions. For that reason, we intend to support the introduction of the bill by holding a number of public exhibitions, especially in North Queensferry, South Queensferry and Kirkliston, so that individuals whose interests are directly affected by the bill's provisions will have an opportunity to understand its contents fully and to reach an informed view about representations or objections that they wish to make after the bill has been introduced. The exhibitions are part and parcel of the consultation approach that we have attempted to take in pursuing the project. As Kathryn McKee mentioned, we speak to affected individuals and landowners on a day-to-day basis. Once the bill has been introduced, we will hold exhibitions to inform individuals further.

Again, there seems to be great concentration on public exhibitions. One reason that people may not give feedback is that they may have given up on getting a straight answer, rather than that they are happy with what is happening. Much of the feedback in the correspondence that I have received seems to suggest that. Will Transport Scotland attempt to re-engage with the people whom it has already lost along the way and who feel that there is no point in engaging with its public exhibitions?

I will answer your question, but I want first to respond to your point about the need to make available information about the project, which is complex and large scale and relates to matters with which people do not deal on a day-to-day basis.

We recognise that we need to make information available to the public in an accessible and understandable way. For the first time on a transport project, Transport Scotland produced a document called "Engaging with Communities", which was made available in 2008, because we recognised that we needed to set out precisely how people could engage with us and influence the project, what the parameters were for that, and the different avenues through which they could reach us. In the past year, we have worked to fulfil the commitments in the document and we have undertaken the consultation that was outlined in it.

As Frazer Henderson mentioned, we are learning from the feedback that we picked up from residents and community councils about how they would like to engage with us and receive information. We are implementing that and changing the way in which we deal with them. We have successful relationships with a number of the communities, and particularly with the community councils in North and South Queensferry. We will strive to continue to do that as we close the informal consultation and move into the statutory process.

The telephone inquiry line has been mentioned as an example of good engagement. There is indeed such a phone line, but when people call, they do not feel that they are speaking to someone who will answer their query. I have also had comments about the sheer length of time that it takes to get an answer to correspondence, and then most people are not happy with the clarity of the decision. I am not suggesting that the people who are affected by the project will always be entirely happy with the answers that they get, but it would certainly be good if the letters and phone calls were such that they could understand the answers that they get and their implications.

I urge caution about using the telephone line as a great example of public engagement. The feedback that I have been getting is that people are not impressed when they use it.

We will take that on board and try to improve that side of things for the future.

It is disappointing to hear that. That is not feedback that we have had before, but we will certainly take it on board.

On the turnaround time for correspondence, the team works to a deadline of providing responses within 20 working days wherever possible.

It also depends on the question that we are asked. If the question is on engineering issues and we have done the engineering, we can answer it. If it is on environmental analysis, we are often not at the point of having the figures for that, because that depends on our finishing the engineering and considering the consequences. That is why a lot of the questions that interest people will not finally be answered until we publish the environmental statement later this year.

Des McNulty has a supplementary question.

I have two, convener. It is always difficult to summarise such documents, but I tend to look at the numbers and focus on the concerns that were highlighted most frequently. The four highest figures relate to concerns about the display of inaccurate images at exhibitions; concerns about lack of consultation with residents of Dundas home farm, which was raised 19 times; concerns about the effectiveness and validity of the consultation process and whether views will be considered and feedback provided; and requests for information about why the proposals changed from those that were consulted upon in August 2008 and why those who would be affected were not consulted.

The replies to those concerns are among the weakest responses that you came up with. Given that your own document shows that they are the main things that were thrown up, do you believe that your specific responses to those four points are adequate?

Some of them relate to inadvertent errors that should not have happened. The one about the material that was on display refers to a photomontage that was shown at South Queensferry. By way of explanation, a newsletter that we published in December showed an arrangement at South Queensferry. By the time of the exhibition, we had changed the junction's design. I regret that we did not change the photomontage—we should have done that. To be frank, there is no excuse for that; the reason is simply inadvertency. We have learned from that.

As for the commentary aspect, our proposals did not meet everybody's wishes. Before August 2007, the project was to be heavily engineered and ran at a cost of £3.7 billion to £4.2 billion. It was well capable of increasing the amount of traffic to Edinburgh and other areas, but it failed to address some causes of the problems. The changes that were made after then resulted from the analysis of the existing bridge's capability that the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth promised to undertake when he met the committee in January 2008 and from examination of the reason for queue development in Fife and South Queensferry. An engineering solution was produced to deliver an answer within the parameters that were set for the project, at a reasonable cost and with less impact on the environment.

That did not please the people who saw the project as an excuse to develop a higher-capacity road network in the area. Criticisms will be made, which it is right that we record and understand. We accept that we should welcome some criticisms, to the extent that the changes that we have made might not be in line with everybody's wishes but are right in the context of what has been Government transport policy for 13 or 14 years.

The convener, Shirley-Anne Somerville, Margaret Smith and I attended a meeting in Queensferry that was attended predominantly by people from the Dundas home farm estate, who are concerned about the process that they have experienced and the project's impact on them. Their concerns have two strands. The first is that, as Mr Howison just said, the story kept changing and the impact that was presented in the first instance was not what was subsequently presented—it was perpetually modified. The second and more substantive point is that those people feel that the route choice and the road network fundamentally disadvantage them, and that less disadvantageous alternatives for them could have been considered. I simply ask whether, even at this late stage, an opportunity exists to fulfil their wish for the impact on them to be considered as part of a re-engineering or reorganisation of the access routes to the bridge.

The impact that the project will have on those people is being reconsidered. Several subsequent meetings have been held with the residents and proposals have been made.

As for the road alignment, many route options were considered at the beginning of 2008. They were honed in the summer of 2008 to two options south of the river, which were examined and analysed. The route that we have proposed is the preferred option.

I will make an engineering observation. The original illustrative route that was proposed in 2007 connected the new crossing directly to the M9. Given traffic conditions in the west of Edinburgh, the reality is that the traffic going from the crossing to the north and centre of Edinburgh and much of the traffic going to the west of Edinburgh will use Queensferry Road. The illustrative route in 2007 did not capture the amount of traffic that would leak from that route on to the A904, if a junction with the A904 were provided to connect to south Queensferry. The proposal that we have brought forward is the engineering answer to the requirements for traffic dispersion from the southern landfall of the bridge. The previous examples would not have been practicable.

The full report analysing those matters is on the Transport Scotland website, and it is broken down into the work that was done prior to March 2008, the work that was done from March to August, and the work up to December 2008, when the managed crossing strategy was brought forward.

We have got slightly ahead of ourselves with our questions. We move straight to Alison McInnes's questions.

A number of the points that I was going to raise have been picked up on already.

I have a final point about consultation. I note that 53 per cent of your respondents were from Edinburgh and 31 per cent were from Fife, but less than 1 per cent came from East Lothian or Midlothian, and only 6 per cent came from West Lothian. Are you going to do anything to improve engagement with residents in the areas concerned?

The numbers and the feedback came from the exhibitions, which were almost equally well attended in the areas that you refer to and the other areas. There was the same level of awareness of the project as well as of the opportunity to attend the exhibitions. I cannot account for why some people felt that they did not need or wish to submit feedback on the back of that, but we certainly catered for the areas equally, if that is what you are alluding to.

I wish to move on to budget issues. One or two of you might be able to relax; others can respond. The Scottish Government's current cost projections indicate that the new Forth crossing will cost between £1.7 billion and £2.3 billion, which suggests an area of uncertainty of £600 million. That is clearly a high level of uncertainty. How is that uncertainty being managed down, given the stage that you are at in defining the cost of the bridge? What risks are being removed as part of that process of refining the cost?

The answer must come in two parts, from me and Mike Glover. It is necessary to understand how the budget has been calculated in order to appreciate the range. We considered what we thought the bridge would cost at 2006 prices—that is, real prices that we have some sort of handle on. We went on to consider inflation up to present-day figures, then moved forward to actual outturn. We are talking about outturn figures—numbers of pound notes—for the whole project once it is completed. That is not the cost of constructing the bridge; the figures are for the whole project at outturn prices. The range comes from our consideration of two inflation rates—a high and a low rate. The uncertainty over inflation produces the wide range.

I invite Mike Glover to say something about risk and optimism bias.

It is important to start with the basics of how we arrive at the cost of a project. First, we engineer it and then consider various ways of establishing the cost of the artefact. In that respect, we use a base cost—which in this case is at fourth-quarter 2006 prices—and work through the cost of labour, materials and so on to end up with what we call a spot cost. That figure—which, as I say, is the cost at 2006 prices—is not flexible.

We then carry out a risk analysis to find out what might influence the cost, for example the scarcity of materials or unforeseen ground conditions. Many of the issues might be environmental, but a great number of them relate simply to the logistics of building the works.

We also take a view on the level of information that we have been able to establish at that point of the project. You will appreciate that, at the outset of a project, our understanding of the issues that need to be dealt with is very different from the understanding that we have when we move towards tendering the works. The mechanism that we use to take account of that additional uncertainty is called optimism bias.

The Treasury lays down in the green book a set of what might be termed quite loose rules but which are certainly solid guidelines to establish the level of additional risk—or, if you like, super risk—that applies in a project. At the end of the process, we bring together the spot cost, the risk assessment that we have carried out and the optimism bias to reach a number. It is not a flexible number that floats, say, between £1.7 billion and £2.3 billion; it is a number to which we apply a cash flow, which gives us the money that will be spent through the project's duration. In this case, the project will require five and a half years of construction, with two years of going through statutory processes to secure the approvals to build it. That means that some of the money that we are talking about will be spent seven years hence, and the divergence between the £1.7 billion and £2.3 billion figures arises as a result of the different levels of inflation that we apply to the money throughout the whole period.

I feel that the elements that we can manage such as the spot price and the risk are very much under our control. However, the issues related to inflation are outside our control, and therefore we can only advise on what we expect the outturn to be. I am sorry if I have given you too much in one go, but that is the process that we go through.

No, your explanation has been reasonably straightforward. However, would it not be more sensible to publish the risk-adjusted spot price that you are more certain of and allow us to examine the substance of those costs? After all, providing 2016 costs for the bridge simply introduces unnecessary uncertainty and, as far as I understand it, is not the practice that you follow in other projects. For example, the costs for the Aberdeen western peripheral route reflect the point at which they were identified instead of being projected ahead.

I think that, as the project progresses through the approvals process, Parliament is entitled to know the number of pound notes that we believe it will cost at the end of the day.

But according to your earlier explanation, you have a spot price that you can measure the risk on, known variables and so on. As a result, you have a number that you can be relatively definite about. However, with the 2016 costs that you have given us, there are areas about which you cannot be definite, which means that you are introducing unnecessary uncertainty. I am sorry, but I do not follow the logic of not giving us the price that you can quantify as close to certainty as is possible.

The numbers are available; they are in the reports that we published. The summary that I have just taken you through is not something that has not been seen before—that is the process.

So the numbers—

Yes, the totals are there.

Do you want to put them on the record? What is the actual cost, excluding inflationary assumptions for the future?

I would rather give the information to the committee after the meeting than rely on my memory of four significant figures.

Can you give the committee the actual costs as you have them, based on a more accurate measurement than that which produced the range of £1.7 billion to £2.3 billion?

My recollection is that that information was tabulated, to show how we had worked out a figure from the base prices upwards. The information can be given.

That would be useful. I will stipulate which bits of information we want—

I am sorry to interrupt. If it would be helpful, I can tell you that we had an industry day in March, and we produced a publication, which is freely available from us, in which we said:

"the approximate value of the design and construction of the project at today's prices is considered to be of the order of £1.1 billion."

That figure is in the public domain, but we can give you the precise figure.

That would be useful. Can you give us a breakdown that includes the cost of the connected roads, the bridge construction costs, consultancy fees and so on? In the initial consultation, the figure that was given was about £3.7 billion. How on earth is it that you consulted on a bridge that in principle would cost £3.7 billion but you now think that the actual cost of the project, when you have sorted out the risk, will be £1.1 billion? That is not a minor adjustment, is it?

No, it is not, and we should be fairly proud of what we have done. The original outturn cost range, when the project was investigated in 2007, was £3.7 billion to £4.2 billion. However, in January 2008, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth gave the committee an undertaking that he would consider what use might be made of the existing bridge, given its improving prognosis. During 2008, we therefore considered how much of the functionality of the new crossing could be handled by the existing bridge. As a result, we have been able to cut down on the size of the bridge and the amount of road works. That is value engineering, which has led to real gains in price reduction.

The price range of £1.7 billion to £2.3 billion is the outturn cost range, which includes optimism bias, VAT and the cost of capital to Government. Therefore, the price includes a number of elements above and beyond the actual price that we would pay to a contractor to build the bridge. There is no inconsistency in that regard: there is a figure for the total cost to the public of delivering the project, and there is another figure for the cost that we would pay if we were able to get a price from a contractor today, in an inflation-free environment and without VAT—the spot price.

You must accept that people will be concerned at a price that varies from £1.1 billion to between £1.7 billion and £2.3 billion, and then to £3.7 billion. I accept that the £3.7 billion figure is for a different design of project, but the variation is still very wide. The poor member of the public is left saying, "We're always comparing apples with pears, even though we're talking about the same bridge." You never provide us with a basis on which to compare costs. When we consider how the Danes, the Koreans or others are bridging estuaries, they seem to be able to do it more cost-effectively than we can—based on your previous figures. However, you now seem to be saying that the real figure is £1.1 billion, which might bear more comparison with what the Danes and Koreans are doing.

We are talking about two distinct mechanisms. The first, the move from £3.7 billion to £1.7 billion, is value engineering. You would expect us to go through that process to ensure that we secured best value for money. The second issue is the comparison between the overall project cost and the value of what we would expect a tender to come in at today, in an inflation-free and VAT-free environment, and without the ancillary costs. That is probably why we have concentrated on the overall project cost outturn: we want to provide the public with the number of pound notes that the project will cost at the end of the day.

I am less clear now about whether we are talking about a specific price for this project than I was five or 10 minutes ago, before you started answering questions. You are still saying that the range is £1.7 billion to £2.3 billion, and you are also saying that you have a specific figure of £1.1 billion. What is the relationship between them? If I, Des McNulty or any other member of the committee starts lodging questions for ministers today, asking what the price of the new Forth road bridge will be, what figure will ministers give?

It depends—

The answer "I don't know" is legitimate.

It depends on the question. John Howison has given a good explanation of the mechanics of the money. I mean, do you think that the pound note in your pocket has the same value as it had, say, seven years ago?

It seems to me that the answer to the question, "How much is this bridge expected to cost?" is, "We don't know."

If you asked ministers at the moment how much the project would cost, they would tell you that the outturn price of the project would be between £1.7 billion and £2.3 billion.

When I consider other capital projects—perhaps not of the same scale as this project, but of the nearest scale, if I can put it that way—I see that a different accounting methodology is employed when it comes to time scales, or time base, in order to calculate the cost. The cost projections for the M74 extension, for the Aberdeen western peripheral route, for Borders rail and other projects are not estimated on a cost base that is seven or eight years ahead of now. They are projected either on a current time base or, sometimes, on an historical time base. That gives an accurate basis for calculations, and, as I said earlier, means that we do not have to make heroic assumptions about future inflation.

With this project, it seems that a substantial element of the projected cost is based on inflation assumptions that may or may not turn out to be true. Surely a better way of understanding the cost of the bridge is likely to be based on knowledge that we have now about what the actual cost will be, based on matters about which we can be relatively certain. In the future, we might have to adjust the figure, perhaps if the assumptions turn out to be wrong or because of other circumstances, such as inflation. However, while the Scottish Government came up with 2016 prices for a range of projects—two bridges and a tunnel—the 2016 price for the current crossing has turned out to be way beyond what anyone now anticipates it will cost. You now tell us that the actual figure, based on current prices, for the bridge that you propose to build is roughly a quarter of that initial projected cost.

I am not an accountant, but I have sat on Finance Committees for long enough to know that that is a strange way of doing things and a strange way of explaining the matter to the general public. We need defined and clear information that is based on what we know. We can then make comparisons and judgments about what you are doing, and you will not be able to hide behind assumptions or financial projections over which you have little or no control.

Our budgets are expressed in outturn prices and therefore our estimates must be expressed in outturn prices so that we can manage our projects within the money that Parliament makes available.

Yes, but the baseline approach that you are adopting for the bridge project is different from the approach in other projects.

My understanding is that the approach that is adopted for all projects is to estimate their outturn prices.

If you look at the current cost projections for the Aberdeen western peripheral route or the M74 project, you will find that that is not the case. You might have to go away and consider the issue, but I have asked enough parliamentary questions about the way in which such projects are costed to know that the basis of the Forth bridge project is different. I cannot pursue the point further today, but it strikes me as strange that you have come up with such vastly different figures for the cost of a single bridge.

I explained the two mechanisms that are behind that. One is value engineering, for which we make no apology and which has reduced the price substantially. The second is an expression of the components of the total price and the total price at outturn. Some of the money will be spent in 2016 and some will be spent in 2012, but it all has to be inflated forward to get the expected number of pound notes that will be required. We are describing components of the outturn price of £1.7 billion to £2.3 billion.

One of the issues about the crossing is that the funding mechanism is not clear. I presume that the Government will have to come up with a proposition for how the project will be funded. The Government will have to say to the banks, the Westminster Government or other stakeholders, "This is what we want to do for this amount of money." Is the way in which you have set out the proposals the best way of establishing a funding mechanism and funding certainty for the people whom you seek to engage as partners?

Actually, there is no lack of clarity about the funding. The Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change made it clear in his announcement on 10 December that the project will be funded with Government funds, as a design and build contract.

Okay.

That was the minister's statement at that time and it remains the minister's view.

I suspect that we will continue to take up many of the issues that we have covered during the course of the project and in questions to ministers.

I want to ask about the connecting road network for the proposed new crossing. Why will the new crossing be connected to the existing road network by dual carriageway rather than by motorway-standard roads?

When we put forward the proposals in the bill, we will seek to extend the M90 from its present position to the northern bridgehead. The bridge itself will be motorway as far as the South Queensferry junction. The road from the Echline junction is already a motorway—the M9 spur. Our present proposal is for the section in between, at the south of South Queensferry, to be a special road rather than a motorway, largely because that road will have to take the traffic from the A90 from Edinburgh until it can leave the road at the South Queensferry junction. In effect, the road network for the bridge will be motorway standard all the way through, although in the interim the section south of South Queensferry will be designated as a special road rather than a motorway.

So it will be as close to motorway standard as is possible but, because of the necessity of having a junction, it will not be categorised as motorway.

That small section of it will not be categorised as motorway.

Have you modelled the possible congestion impacts of that decision? If so, what were the results?

That process is continuing. It is clear from the modelling that we have done why congestion occurs at the moment—it is not because the road is dual two lane instead of dual three lane but to do with the proliferation of junctions all the way from Halbeath right down through the scheme, and the interaction of traffic at those junctions. We intend to address that through the introduction of the intelligent transport system, which is a way of electronically controlling motorway traffic that is already used in Glasgow. We want to take it a stage further by making the speed limits, which are advisory in Glasgow, mandatory, as they are on the M25 and M42. We will also introduce the controls for metering in traffic from junctions that have been piloted on the Glasgow motorway network.

Will you model your proposals?

They are being modelled at the moment.

I will allow Margaret Smith a brief supplementary on that.

What work have you done on the traffic levels on the connecting road network? When will that be made available to local residents and others?

I also want to pick up on what you said about the indicative road alignment that was in the original proposals, which would have taken traffic straight from the bridgehead out to the M9. Local residents and others based their interpretation of what would happen on those proposals, but I think that you said that further work was done and that that proposition was found not to be feasible. I am a little unclear about why something that it was thought would be helpful to include in the original proposals for illustrative purposes was then judged not to be feasible. Quite a lot of the anger and concern in South Queensferry is about the changes in the roads. I am unclear why it is not feasible to take the road from the bridge away from the town straight to the M9. Was cost the only reason? You certainly said that it was an issue.

I will deal with that last point first. I think that I mentioned that the problem with taking the traffic on to the M9 would be that, if it followed through into Edinburgh, it would use Newbridge roundabout, St John's Road and Corstorphine Road to do so. The reality is that Queensferry Road is by far the most effective artery into Edinburgh and the route of choice. If we sought to take people from the bridge on to the M9, there would be a substantial leakage of traffic on to the A904 through South Queensferry and back on to the A90 at Echline, the effect of which would be fairly undesirable.

Would it be possible for the committee to have the figures on which those observations, and the decisions to which they led, were based?

The general analysis is already on the Transport Scotland website as one of the reports that we published to support the decisions that were taken in December.

Is there an outstanding point from Margaret Smith's original question?

There was a question about the traffic analysis that we have done.

Traffic has been analysed using two different methods. One involves the conventional transport model that was developed by Transport Scotland. It is a typical assignment multimodal model and it pushes traffic around the system—I see that you are smiling, convener. It has several disadvantages, in that it does not completely reflect congestion in the system, which means that it has the propensity to overassign traffic to various routes.

We are also analysing traffic using a Paramics model, which models the movements of individual vehicles through the network. That is the exercise that we are involved in at the moment.

Can you comment on the current condition of the existing Forth road bridge and advise whether, in the long term, it will be able to cope with its proposed new role as a dedicated public transport corridor?

FETA and its chief engineer would be the authority on that, but we work closely with them.

The problem with the existing bridge that captures most attention is the distress in the suspension cables, which have already lost about 10 per cent of their strength. The aim is to stabilise that deterioration through a dehumidification process. There are many other problems, however.

The committee will be aware that, because of the heavy goods traffic on the bridge, the resurfacing—which takes a whole summer to do—lasts only about eight years. That situation is likely to get worse. There are things called half-joints between the main joints on the bridge, where one beam rests on another, and they are suffering extreme distress as a result of heavy goods vehicles. The committee is probably aware that a contract was to have been issued for the renewal of the main joints, but FETA decided to suspend that when the construction of the new bridge and the timetable for that was confirmed. That work will be done later, which will result in a considerable saving.

There are operational disadvantages to the bridge as well. For example, it has no hard shoulder, so any traffic incident will cause a problem. For 30 to 40 days a year, it is closed to high-sided vehicles and, whenever a member of the public decides to climb up the cables—which I understand is quite easy to do because of the slope on the cables—the road is closed until the person is removed from the bridge.

The question is: with all of those disadvantages, how satisfactory will it be for public transport? We have considered that from two angles. One is the issue of the loading of the bridge and the other is the articulation of the bridge.

On loading, one must realise that the bridge uses about 85 per cent of its strength to keep itself up and about 15 per cent to cope with traffic loading. By removing general traffic from the bridge and using the bridge only for public transport, we will reduce the loading by such a degree that—if the cable stabilisation process is successful—we will be able to use the bridge for public transport without any further immediate concerns about the cables.

What I have just said concerns public transport in the form of buses, but we also considered whether the bridge might be capable of accommodating light rail transit in the form of trams. We conducted an analysis of the effects of stripping off part of the existing deck and replacing it with the equipment that would be required by trams, and we concluded that that would be acceptable as far as loading was concerned. The majority of the options that we considered reduced the load. Further, because the number of trams on the bridge can be controlled, we can control the loading on the bridge more precisely than we can if heavy goods vehicles are using it.

We are satisfied that, subject to stabilisation of the suspension cables, the bridge should be capable of carrying the live load of public transport as well as the dead load of the equipment that would be required if trams were using the bridge.

We considered whether the articulation of the bridge—that is, the movement that is caused as a vehicle goes across the deck, under the towers and across to the other side—would be excessive for a tram, and we came to the conclusion that it would not be.

The work that we have done, as we have reported on our website, satisfies us that the bridge will be satisfactory for public transport. Should the stabilisation work on the suspension cables not be successful, we believe that the cables can be replaced without interruption to public transport, as those vehicles could be concentrated on one carriageway. However, that would require additional work, and we would consider it only if the dehumidification were unsuccessful.

Mike, would you like to add anything to that?

No, that was word perfect. Great stuff.

That was a comprehensive answer in relation to loading, but the other problem with the sole use of the bridge by public transport is the fact that 30 or 40 days a year can be lost due to wind conditions. Would that have an impact on public transport? It will be difficult to get people to leave their cars at home if their public conveyance might not be able to cross the Forth 30 or 40 days a year.

I should have seen that question coming and answered it earlier.

You are right to highlight the problem. Because the existing bridge is a suspension bridge, although the wind shielding around the towers can be improved, no wind shielding can be provided over the bridge. That is why the new bridge is being provided with extra-wide hard shoulders. The idea is that, in periods when public transport is unable to use the existing bridge, there will be a priority route from the Ferry Toll bus station on to the hard shoulders of the new bridge and off again on the other side.

You can see my next question coming, I am sure. Will there be a similar diversionary route for trams?

The trams are not wind sensitive, and we cannot think of any circumstance in which the existing bridge would not be capable of taking trams. However, in the unforeseeable circumstance in which something happens that we do not know about at the moment, the hard shoulders of the new bridge would also be able to take the loading for trams.

For completeness, can you say anything about the role of park-and-ride facilities in the public transport scenarios that we are talking about?

Yes. The role of park-and-ride facilities is pivotal in catering for future travel demand. I have said that a new crossing will not provide a step change for general traffic and private cars; realistically, even if it did, that would not make a lot of difference because the road network of the bridge sits within a wider environment that is fairly congested—there is no more capacity for traffic coming into Edinburgh. That means that the solution for travel has to be the transfer of passengers on to rail—there are rail proposals in the strategic transport projects review—and on to buses, through the provision of park-and-ride facilities.

There is a fairly successful 1,000-car facility at Ferry Toll and, as part of the project, we will be improving its functionality. We have considered whether the redundant carriageway at South Queensferry, underneath the Echline junction, could be used for a park-and-ride facility for people from South Queensferry and people coming from West Lothian. We are satisfied that that is a possibility. It will not be included in the bill, but the south east of Scotland transport partnership is reviewing it further. Should that be of benefit when the new bridge opens in 2016, it could be developed relatively quickly.

The STPR also contains policies to improve strategic park and ride. In relation to that, we are considering sites at Halbeath and Rosyth in Fife. The STPR includes the policy of introducing an LRT scheme, which would initially be a guided busway from Rosyth to Edinburgh.

The transfer of private car users to public transport is essential and, if the convener will indulge me a bit longer, I will say something about that. The general assumption is, "Well, hang on a minute—the bridge is taking between 65,000 and 68,000 vehicles a day. What difference will a 1,000-vehicle park and ride make?" The bridge is not congested for most of the day, so we are not talking about park and ride replacing large volumes of traffic. However, park and ride must provide an alternative at the peak hours, when about 3,000 to 3,500 vehicles an hour go over the crossing in one direction. A park-and-ride facility with 1,000 car spaces that took 1,000 cars off the road and replaced them with 20 buses would have a fundamental impact on that volume of traffic. For travel growth, we depend totally on the Government's modal shift policies being effective.

Is it your understanding that the Scottish Government guarantees that the current Forth road bridge will not be reopened to general traffic following completion of the new Forth crossing, even if cross-Forth traffic congestion continues to increase?

It is not my place to give a guarantee. All that I can say is that the Government's policy is that that should not happen—and I understand that that would also be Labour's policy if it were in power. The switch from private to public transport was kicked off by Dr Mawhinney in the Conservative party back in 1996, so I see no circumstances in which the existing bridge would be returned to use for general traffic.

I will invite you to try to see such circumstances. The pressure of public opinion about the operation of cross-Forth travel has had a substantial effect in recent years, which has included the ditching of equipment—the smart-tolling system—that was paid for at public expense. Is it not just about possible that, come 2016 or whenever the additional bridge opens, the Government of the day might not be wholly convinced that trams are a good thing? I know that that is hard to believe, but that Government might decide that, instead of putting trams on the existing bridge, it would open the bridge not necessarily to heavy goods vehicles but to some private car use. Is that not possible? No guarantee can be given now that that will not happen.

The consequence of what you describe would be that, instead of queueing in the area of the bridge, traffic would queue on the entrance to Edinburgh at Barnton. It would also queue as it tried to peel off the M9 at Newbridge. If that were sorted, it would then queue at Gogar roundabout and at Maybury roundabout. The effective treatment of traffic is not just about the estuarial crossing, the M90 and the M9 spur but about the whole network in the area, which is incapable of taking extra traffic at the moment.

We will perhaps have to wait until 2016 before we know whether the pressure of public opinion has the same effect on bad transport decisions as it has had in the past.

You have already answered some of my questions about the bill that will come before Parliament, but I am still interested in getting a detailed description of the timeline from here until the bill is passed, with particular reference to the strategic environmental assessment process, the tendering process, construction and so on. That might be a long answer and, through sheer pressure of time, we might miss some parts out, so will you commit to write to the committee with a detailed description of the timeline that we can analyse? If there are any issues about the timeline, we can get you all back in again to discuss it one more time.

Yes, we can do that. However, I would not provide the answer, so it might not be so long. If you want a quick answer now, Frazer Henderson could perhaps help you.

We could get a quick answer now, but it would still be useful to get the timeline set out in writing, so that we have it all on the record.

The intention is to introduce the bill in November. The passage of the bill is dependent on Parliament, but there is a reasonable expectation that we would at least get to stage 3 no later than February 2011. In the written response, I will set out the tendering process that will run at the same time that we are going through the bill process.

I think that on Thursday morning Parliament will be discussing the standing orders on hybrid bills, which set out the various stages for that.

Given the nature of the project, there is an onus on us and on the Parliament to ensure that individuals whose interests are likely to be affected are fully informed about how they can make representations on the bill, what the process is and so on. We will issue a series of information to that effect in early July—we are just waiting until the hybrid bill motion is passed in Parliament on Thursday.

In short, I will write to the committee about the timeline, and I would be delighted to answer any supplementary questions about the process. We will appear before a hybrid bill committee towards the end of the year and on many future occasions, and we would welcome the opportunity to see members of the Transport, Infrastructure and Climate Change Committee over the coming years.

I am sure that you will.

Will the written response include information on the strategic environmental assessment, the code of conduct for construction, any consultation that is available and input that local residents can feed into the important document that you are working on over the summer?

Yes. You have highlighted two documents that are key in supporting the bill process: the environmental assessment and the code of construction practice. A third is the noise and vibration statement. We take all three extremely seriously, because they affect people's day-to-day lives. There will be a lot of scrutiny of those documents, so we have to engage with various parties to ensure that we seek their views. The code of construction practice in particular reflects some of the concerns and issues that local residents have. You can be assured that the documentation will be sound and complete. There will be aspects of it to which people will object or seek to make improvements, but that is part of the healthy debate that there should be about the bill as it proceeds.

We have overrun slightly, but are there any final questions for the panel?

I just want to pick up on Shirley-Anne Somerville's question about the code of construction practice. It will probably not come as too much of a shock to the committee to hear that some of the issues that are giving great cause for concern at the moment are around the siting of construction compounds, particularly the suggestion that one could be put in the Echline field.

Mr Howison, it says in the paperwork that you have given me and others who have attended some meetings that your overarching aim is to construct the scheme with the least practicable impact on communities and the environment. Why do you think that siting a construction compound for six to seven years next to hundreds of houses will have the least practicable impact on communities and the environment? I accept that access to the sea is needed, but would not it be more sensible to site the compound on the other side of the road, where it would not be at the back of people's homes?

The Echline field is part of the land that Transport Scotland already owns—it was purchased for a previous project. It is easy to accept that a site compound on the other side of the road could be made equally effective, but our problem is whether Parliament would be prepared to give us powers of compulsion to acquire land on the other side of the road when we already have available land in our ownership. One issue is whether the owner of that land would support us in changing the favoured location of the site. We are on the point of contacting the owner to seek his views on that. Those views will be fundamental to what happens.

I have a point of clarification. Obviously, whether you are given temporary compulsory purchase order powers to acquire any land that you do not own is up to Parliament, but I am simply picking up on what your document says. It does not say that your overarching aim in your construction approach is for the project to cost as little money as possible. If it did, your comment about ownership would have more foundation, but you actually say that you want to have the least impact on communities and the environment. I hope that Parliament shares that aim and that people will not simply say, "Well, let's use this particular site because we happen to have it in public ownership already."

We are looking carefully at how we can lay out the site that is in our ownership to minimise the impact on houses. For example, we think that the industrial part of the compound will not be close to the houses; rather, there could be a visitor centre close to the houses that would be used for training purposes and for the numerous people who will want to see the bridge being constructed. We are already considering minimising impacts on the land that we have.

Another issue is whether it is practical to presume that other land will become available on a voluntary basis. If it did, we could probably move quite easily on that. The other issue is whether the Parliament would wish to give us powers to acquire land from a third party when we already own land that could be used for that purpose.

Thank you very much for giving us your time to answer questions. I realise that we have taken a little longer than we expected, but your evidence is appreciated. I also thank you for the expression of enthusiasm for future meetings. I am certain that members share that enthusiasm.